US Expat Barbara Drake talks about the win by La Teta Asustada of best film at the Berlin film festival last week and about other notable works covering a dark period of modern Peruvian history.

Congratulations to Peruvian-born director Claudia Llosa, whose drama The Milk of Sorrow (La Teta Asustada) captured the Golden Bear for best film at the Berlin film festival last week.

I am eager to see the film, which to my knowledge is not presently showing in Lima.

Llosa’s film follows on the heels of a growing trend in art and literature to explore the brutal events of the Shining Path era of the 1980s and ’90s. Nearly 70,000 Peruvians died or disappeared between 1980 and 2000 as a result of the armed conflict between Maoist Shining Path guerillas and Peru’s military.

Some notable books in English and artworks that address the Shining Path conflict and its legacy include: